1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the hot extrusion of continuously cast stainless steels and super alloys into tubes, bars or sections.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There are a variety of metal working processes, and they are generally classified into hot and cold working processes. Hot working is widely employed as it enables the working of metals with a smaller force, and includes rolling, extrusion and forging. Hot extrusion is particularly advantageous, since it provides a high working ratio, and facilitates the manufacture of products having various shapes by merely changing the dies.
Hot rolled billets have long been used for hot extrusion. These billets are prepared by the hot rolling of ingots cast from molten metal, and have a circular cross section. With the development of continuous casting, however, it is now possible to prepare continuously cast billets having a circular cross section directly from molten metal without the intermediary of ingot making and cogging or blooming.
Continuous casting is, of course, applicable to stainless steels and super alloys. The use of continuously cast billets for hot extrusion is expected to provide a greatly improved yield in the manufacture of hot extruded stainless steel and super alloy products. It has, however, been impossible to employ continuously cast stainless steel or super alloy billets for hot extrusion, since a lot of streaks, which extend in the extruding direction, appear on the surface of the extruded products, and impair their commercial value seriously. These surface defects are due to the fact that those materials do not undergo any phase transformation when they are heated to an extrusion temperature, and cooled. The products extruded from hot rolled billets develop hardly any such streaks.
The hot extrusion of continuously cast stainless steels having an as-cast structure has long been the subject of great interest. Extrusions from cast billets have a surface characterized by streaks or "score marks" resulting from coarse crystal grains in as-cast billets, as R. Cox points out in his article entitled "Part II: Recent Experiences with the 1150 Ton Extrusion Press at the Works of Low Moor Fine Steels Ltd.", Journal of The Iron and Steel Institute, March 1964, pages 246 to 260. Cox attempted upsetting in an extrusion container, but could not obtain any modification or recrystallization of the as-cast structure. He also conducted comparative tests using flat-faced and conical-entry dies, but could not achieve any improvement in the surface quality of extrusions.
In "Iron and Steel" (a Japanese journal), vol. 65 (1979), page 244, Sugitani et al. report that they could obtain steel tubes having a smooth surface by dividing crystal grains finely by expanding or like procedure. It is, however, considered in view of the experiments of Cox that the fine division of crystal grains by Sugitani et al. could be achieved by reheating after expansion.